Behind the Scenes Minis: Emergency Medicine

Holly and Tracy talk about their relationships with emergency medicine and 9-1-1, as well as their appreciation for medical professionals.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to our casual
Friday chats behind the scenes of stuff you missed in
History Class. I'm Molly Fry, I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and
today it was Emergency Medicine Week. Today was Emergency Medicine Week.

(00:24):
That's where my brain's at. It's a little broken at
this point. Yeah, I I it took me a while
to work on this one because there's so much source
material and it's kind of hard to pick out which
things you want to focus on. And I am sure
there are elements in the history of emergency medicine in
the US that people are like, Oh, I wish you
had talked about that. I'm sorry we didn't. Can't do

(00:45):
at all. Yeah. Um, I was a little bit struck
because I am one of those people who is not
great about maintaining a regular GP. So I'm kind of
one of those jerks that's like at the emergency room
going something is going wrong and they're like, who's your GP,

(01:05):
And I'm like, I don't have one. I do right now.
I'm being very good. But yeah, as we were talking
about how people use it for outpatient care. I try
not to. I literally would not go if it weren't
an actual situation where I was like, we should address
this quickly. Uh. But I still realized, like it's better
to have baseline health knowledge yourself. So I encourage everyone

(01:29):
to do that if you can. Um. I I do
have a g P and I had been putting off
my physical not not by a long amount, Like I
was one of those things. I was like, Okay, when
I get back from vacation, I'm going to schedule that
physical and I would have been roughly on schedule for it,
but instead I got back from vacation and there was
a pandemic and they're like, there's physicals aren't happening. Physicals
are canceled. Yeah, I'm gonna have to do it later,

(01:51):
along with a lot of other chores that I was
also putting off. And so getting back from vacation well
and being in a pandemic has changed the way I
look at emergency care in general. And I know, like
I have seen videos made by doctors or they're like,
if you have an emergency situation, come to the emergency department,
we want to fix you. But like there was a night,

(02:12):
I was washing dishes these old plates that I've had
since college, so they are elderly. They're like thirty years old,
and they're they're black glass plates, and one of them
just broke while I was washing, and it sliced open
my hand, and I'm standing there like watching a bleed,
and I'm like, how bad is this? Because like could
I do stitches by myself at home? Because I do
not want to go to a medical facility right now,

(02:35):
like one, like there's just the fact that there's potential
exposure to additional illness, but also like I would feel
like a jerk being like I cut my hand on
a dish when I know those nurses and doctors and
other medical staff are so slammed with a pandemic at
the moment. Yeah, I get daily updates from our mayor,

(02:57):
and one of the recent updates from the mayor was like,
we have a lot of reports of people who are
having emergencies not wanting to go to the emergency room
because you're afraid of overtaxing the medical system, which like
mass Massachusetts is a hotspot. Then there's um like it's
we have a field hospital that may reach capacity, like
it's it's a scary thing. But also he was like,

(03:20):
if you're having an emergency, please still go to the emergency, Like,
don't risk your life because you're afraid that either you
will cause a burden or that like you maybe exposed something.
Like they're taking all the precautions. Still try to get
treatment if you're having an emergency. For the record, my
hand is fine. It was just Gonna says. You know,

(03:41):
when you cut your hand, there are a lot of um,
a lot of capillaries and whatnot going on there. It
bleeds sometimes a lot. And I did. I don't want
to be graphic, but I did slice open some skin
and I was just kind of doing that like how
bad is this? And then it's fine, it's healed. Now
it's a UM. I have always said, you know, when

(04:04):
people say, like what job would you want to do
other than yours? What job would you never want to
do other than yours? I could not work in any
medical fields. Yeah. I just couldn't. And I'm not even
that squeamish. I just don't think I could do it right.
We I think have discussed on the show before that
I am not okay with vomit in a lot of contexts,

(04:24):
so that would be a disqualifier. One of the things
that surprised me in this uh these episodes this week, UM,
was I thought that the system was slightly newer than
it really was, because, like I said in the episode,

(04:46):
when I was a kid, we didn't have nine one
one at home. Like I still remember the number we
were supposed to call if there was a fire or
other emergency at our house, and it was not one.
And when we got onto nine one, and like, it
was a pretty big deal and that happened. I mean,
I was old enough to remember it, and I'm I

(05:06):
knew the old number well enough that I still remember it,
and I'm forty four years old. Um So, like I
I somehow thought that one had been developed in the eighties.
It was before that. Oh yeah, see, I was the opposite.
I thought it had been developed way before that, and
it it really was not. It certainly wasn't implemented for

(05:27):
a long time in a lot of places. And now
I'm trying to remember when we when I was nine,
we moved from uh living outside Seattle in the Pacific Northwest,
where I believe we had nine one one, because I
vaguely remember having like a presentation about it at school
to moving to a very rural beach community on the

(05:50):
Gulf Coast. And I don't think we had nine one
one there. But I also was a carefree, stupid kid
who didn't really think about emergencies anyway. In an emergency,
you call mom or dad. Yeah, I wonder now, I
feel like I should look that up. Did we have dad?
Did we have nine on one when we moved to Florida? Uh?

(06:11):
And I don't honestly know I had. I knew a
little bit about the Freedom House Ambulance service before we
did this episode. I did not realize the gravity of
that service in terms of, like any ambulance that picks
you up for an emergency. Today, it's seeds are back

(06:33):
there at Freedom House. And I didn't know how poorly
those paramedics have been treated in terms of being told
they were not qualified for their own jobs. I'm not
surprised by it, but I didn't have And I knew
there was a certainly a racist element to that program

(06:55):
being shut down. Uh, and the politicians of Pittsburgh saying, no,
we're gonna start her own thing. But I didn't I
didn't realize that they were like, oh, you're not qualified
for this job, which is just seethingly angry making for
me because uh, what I would say is not appropriate
for a podcast that is heard sometimes by families and

(07:18):
younger listeners. Um, but it is not cool. I could
tell you that. Um. I also am struck by how
many I mean, we know, if you're drawn to medicine
as a field, you are someone who wants to give
of yourself and take care of others. But I really
like every one of these doctors that comes up in

(07:38):
these two episodes, like the way they are described by
colleagues long after they are gone, is all about how
like it's a life that is to me a little
bit terrifying. Like they didn't take breaks. Um, Nancy Caroline,
people would talk about how she never had like a
night sleep, she would get a few hours here and

(07:59):
there in the ambulance while she was working in between
calls or and like those kinds of lives are. It
really makes it clearer than ever that like we have
not been really appreciating the level of sacrifice that the
medical community in many cases gifts. UM. So again I

(08:21):
deeply thank everyone involved in caring for people, whether that
is during a pandemic or not. I've had surprise hospital
stays where there were some of those nurses I wanted
to hug and cry because I was so grateful for
them taking care of me. UM. So thank you to
all of the nurses and the doctors and the e
m t s and the paramedics. Again, I feel like

(08:41):
we can never thank you enough. I want to figure
out any ways to thank them. Still working on that
in my head. UM, but I think that pretty much
covers it for today. Otherwise I'll start crying because I
always do. I'm not laughing at you, but that was
like a yeah, you can, it's a valid I'm thinking
ahead to what we're recording next where I UM. I

(09:04):
have picked a listener mail that I'm honestly not sure
I'm going to be able to read without crying. Well,
we will get through it in pieces. There's a little
inside information is that sometimes we read things one sentence
at a time, ye might happen and then take breaks.
In our amazing UH, producer editor Casey cuts out all

(09:24):
of the pauses and the crying and they give me
a minutes and then UH, and then he makes it
into an actual functioning discussion or sentence. So uh, Casey
is another one who we always have to thank proviously.
If you would like to write to us and share
your listener mails, your pictures of kitties, your pictures of

(09:44):
your bathrooms which we talked about in one of our
listener mails which I loved, Uh, you can do so
at History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. You
can also reach out to us on social media. We're
everywhere as Missed in History and you can subscribe to
our show if you haven't already. That is easy to
do on the i heeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

(10:04):
wherever it is you listen. Stuff you Missed in History
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app,
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